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I dont know if I would call it the killer of the WDTV due to the price. If you want to find the REAL killer of the WDTV you might want to check out the Xtreamer, now that puppy looks sweet and its only 99 euros which makes it pretty close to the wdtv price. Although the DViCO looks nice and has all the bells and whistles its the price that keeps in the niche market.

I dont know if I would call it the killer of the WDTV due to the price. If you want to find the REAL killer of the WDTV you might want to check out the Xtreamer, now that puppy looks sweet and its only 99 euros which makes it pretty close to the wdtv price. Although the DViCO looks nice and has all the bells and whistles its the price that keeps in the niche market.

The price is definitely a turn off, but it does have ethernet and DVR capabilities out of the box. For $100, I've been happy with my WDTV for the most part.

As for ethernet support out-of-the box, it sounds good, but I couldn't really care less about the DVR part. I would never use it."Use the included remote control to navigate through your entertainment choices using our crisp, animated HD menus." I actually like the WD TV's static menu, I think animations just clutter the UI too much. I hope WD add a alternative to turn off the fade out/fade in effect when pressing OK on a option in their next firmware.

EDIT: Sure, many might prefer this over the WD TV, but I would like to see a review first.

Sunday, July 12, 2009Xtreamer Review From MPCClub.com First "major" review just released, overall good things to say. With my PCH A-110 dying on me I am in the market for a secondary player in my house (I am perfectly content with my HTPCs as my primary players and based on the review and from what others have said I couldn't see using the Xtreamer as a primary player anyhow). However, based on some questionable practices and shady responses I would have a hard time supporting such a company. Also, being in the states the Xtreamer is close to USD 200, which puts it in direct competition with many other players.

See below MPCClub excerpt from the full review which can be found here.

Conclusion on the Xtreamer

We covered so much and then still not covered it all. That’s showing how much is inside this little box. As usual we leave stuff out for you to discover.

A big "well done" to Xtreamer for achieving a €99 player that is more than justa WDTV competition and can even compete with the bigger names on the market at only a fraction of their price however, to convince the true media heavy weights to pick the Xtreamer, several enhancements are necessary, especially inthe video section and overall convenience of the player…

Starting with 24p which is buggy, some problems with playback still exist, the few issues with HD playback make up for a nice target to improve. The MKVsubtitles, both embedded and external subtitles must be loaded simultaneously as having embedded subs on a scene release does not mean our language is included. Therefore we need the ability to load external subtitles even if embedded subtitles are included. If the MKV has 2 subs and there’s one external, the subtitles button should load a virtual list like this and loop through them:1. Subtitles Off2. Embedded sub 13. Embedded sub 24. External sub 1

Next, wireless streaming is important to get tuned a bit more as is network streaming for files. We believe the multiple presses we had to make to start avideo are related to network. On few files we saw choppy playback and someartifacts but considering the €99 player we saw an amazing performance up forcompetition vs. NMT and TViX with about 90% of our files played correctly. More worried I am about so many files requiring us to start it twice or more before it actually starts playing from my NAS and then almost half Youtube video’s failing to play too. A bit of tweaking can resolve this.

NFS is something Xtreamer should consider adding and then update the shortcut options to actually provide the ability to place shortcuts to shares and folders, NFS and SMB sources as fixed target. I would even recommend adding the shortcuts on the main page to avoid the extra clicks to reach shortcuts. It’s called shortcuts for a reason fellas. I also remember Xtreamer told me NFS wassupported, but I could not find it.

Add a bookmark overview from which we can resume playback and update theoptions a little like adding progressive zoom, default image sizes like actual size, stretch, full screen and when done, update the GoTo function to disappear when we press enter to apply our selection. Every click counts…

For setup, we would like the Brightness and Contrast to be available during movie playback without returning to setup section maybe even including HUE and Saturation. Also present a screen including all options so we don’t have to set each one separately, that saves time. More options to set Audio separately from the global variables would be nice too. It’s all about convenience and maximizing options today...

Music and picture sections are truly good. Few updates are necessary which mainly are directed towards adding .FLA extension, support for DTS and AC3files and separate the music preview option from the video preview option asthey purpose a total different thing. In video they are annoying, in music theyare superb. Let’s avoid switching this on and off every time we like to switchmedia types. In addition, the album art files should not be shown separately asit makes browsing more difficult unless we apply the audio filter. Even then, itmight still be an issue when using music files in slideshow if they cause an image to be injected into our slideshow.

I probably overlook some additional comments like the fan noise and other stuff I could come up with as a conclusion, fact is, for €99 this is a superb value and the firmware at this level in many ways is more mature than most players released before. Xtreamer obviously made a decent attempt at tuning the interface to an easy and appealing one, even though it overloaded it with itsown logos on every page, too much for me. Other than the copy section, the interface was convenient and fine. I would like to see the file manager be enhanced to have more files listed.

Now with a few updates maturing the video section, we sure get an affordable alternative to even bigger names on the market than WDTV and not necessarily mean we get less. RealTek is ready to compete obviously with Sigma enabling brands like Xtreamer who add a decent amount of effort into redesigning, to compete with TViX, NMT and HDI and this first attempt to catch up is simply amazing and should warn other brands to stop overcharging.

This player should at least be in your home as a second player or for the less demanding users as a main player. With a few well targeted updates, evenadvanced users can find their needs in the Xtreamer and that for only €99. Rightnow, the video section is more than good and a few targeted updates will make iteven better. This is one "xtreme" value for money.

It will be interesting to see the other new players come to market and compare these against the Xtreamer… Very interesting…

Regarding the Xtreamer, thanks for the links to reviews, but has anyone here actually bought one of these and used them? I just bought one WDTV Live for my parents for Christmas and am getting ready to buy another for myself, but the Xtreamer looks very tempting. I need help making a decision.

Internal HDD Support (plugging one in is easy enough)more internet radio (I don't use my TV for radio)Free 802.11N wifi antenna (prefer to be plugged in)Multilingual Support (I speak English)

Disadvantages:

Quote "Youtube support will be removed from our units in next FW upgrade due to official request from Youtube."Some reviews said the interface was slower, however some said it was fasterSlightly higher cost, but may be well worth itHalf the RAM of WDTV Live (256 vs. 512), slower processor (450 Mhz overclocked vs 500 Mhz) and much less ROM (32MB vs 512MB)Realtek chipset has been demonstrated repeatedly to produce a lower quality picture, especially on DVD isos